Er, a little hesitation can, um, help your brain

Contestants on Radio 4's Just a Minute might not be allowed any hesitation, repetition or deviation, but it seems it could help the listeners to remember more of what they say.

According to a new study, the "ums" and "ers" that sprinkle most people's speech are not a distraction but actually help with understanding.

Experts at Stirling and Edinburgh universities asked volunteers to listen to a series of sentences, including a number punctuated by "ers" and "ahs".

Then they tested how much the listeners could remember, and found that inserting the "ers" had a significant positive effect on how well the subjects recalled what they had heard.

Up to an hour after hearing typical sentences, volunteers got 62 per cent of words correct where there had been an "er" in the sentence.

That compared with 55 per cent for similar utterances where there had not been any stumbles. The tests have since been replicated twice and the results are said to be "statistically significant".

According to the researchers, "disfluencies" like "um" and "er" force the brain to pay attention.

Dr Martin Corley, of Edinburgh University's School of Philosophy, Psychology, and Language Sciences, said: "It's like we are saying to ourselves, 'I'd better pay attention now, because what I thought was going to happen isn't going to happen'."

The academics now plan to see if the effect is the same with words which are used in a similar way, such as "like".